Pop Culture: As the Axl turns

Saturday

Much hoopla surrounded the long-awaited unveiling of “Chinese Democracy” by Guns N’ Roses. The album was released last Sunday, 13 years in the making.

Much hoopla surrounded the long-awaited unveiling of “Chinese Democracy” by Guns N' Roses. The album was released last Sunday, 13 years in the making.

This is not really the Guns N’?Roses we all remember. It’s basically Axl Rose with backup musicians, minus the Guns and the N’.

Rose toiled on this album for about 4,750 days. It has been highly anticipated by music fans who like to highly anticipate things. For those listeners, waiting for the new album was a lot like standing around to see the Loch Ness Monster.

If Rose had a sense of humor to match his creative intensity, he would have titled the CD “Nessie.”

It wasn’t Rose’s plan to spend 1.3 decades working on one album, it just happened that way.
You have to give him credit. Many bands would feel pressure to fill a 113,000-hour lag with a few “best-of” products.

Not GNR. For Rose, this was “The Project.” If he had a sense of irony to match his painstaking meticulousness, he would’ve chosen that as the album title.

It was no doubt an exhausting decade-plus for Rose. Not so much the production of the album, but being forced to indulge the same small-talk whenever he ran into an old friend at the grocery store.

“Hey, Axl! What’re you up to these days, Axl?”

“Just working on ‘Chinese Democracy.’”

“Ah, I see,” the friend says, glancing at Rose’s cart. “Stocking up on some Pop Tarts, are ya?”

It’s been a long time between albums, but that’s nothing new in pop music. Lots of bands have a large “gap” in their catalog. AC/DC released “Black Ice”?last month, eight years after whatever the previous release was.

Boston went eight years between its second and third albums. Patient fans got what they wanted: another album with a spaceship on the cover.

Lags of that length involve a tradeoff. The longer people have to wait, the more pressure there is to put out a masterpiece. Such is the case with the Guns N’ Democracy effort.

Reviews have been mixed. One thing was consistent among all critics: each made a reference to “the first album of original Guns N’ Roses songs since the Bush administration.” They’re talking about the elder Bush.

So Axl is so far the only artist to release back-to-back albums during the administrations of two presidents who were related.

The only other time that could’ve happened was during the John Adams and John Quincy Adams presidencies, but the Rolling Stones missed the chance.

I had planned to say more about the “Chinese Democracy” reviews, but that idea quickly derailed. One minute I was on metacritic.com getting the album’s average score. Next thing I knew, I was on the Netflix site, reviewing movies I haven’t seen yet.

So this week’s column will take another 13 years to finish. Let the anticipation begin.

Sturgis Journal

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